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May 23, 2018
This week’s theme
Eponyms coined after authors

This week’s words
hobbesian
marivaudage
marinism
cervantic
lovecraftian

marinism
Giovanni Battista Marino
Art: Frans Pourbus the Younger

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Marinism

PRONUNCIATION:
(muh-REE-ni-zuhm)

MEANING:
noun: A literary style marked by extravagant imagery, elaborate metaphors, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
After the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Marino (1569-1625). Earliest documented use: 1867.

USAGE:
“[Sweat, ye fires, in preparing metals.]
Ever since seventeenth-century Marinism has fallen out of fashion, an image that switches the sweat from the blacksmith’s brow to the fire of his smithy has been censured as egregiously pointless.”
Michael Riffaterre; The Interpretant in Literary Semiotics; The American Journal of Semiotics (Charlottesville, Virginia); Vol. 3, Issue 4, 1985.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. -Margaret Fuller, author (23 May 1810-1850)

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